EDITORIAL STANDFIRST
Road safety has traditionally been discussed through vehicles, roads, drivers and regulations. The FIA Road Safety Index looks at another part of the equation: the organisation behind the mobility system. It provides a structured, data-driven way for organisations to understand their road-safety footprint, set commitments, measure performance and work towards continuous improvement.
FROM SAFETY PROMISE TO SAFETY PERFORMANCE
The FIA Road Safety Index is a framework developed by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) to help organisations assess, manage, report and improve their impact on road safety. The Index was launched in 2022, with support from the FIA Foundation, drawing on the principle that organisations can measure their road-safety footprint in much the same way that businesses increasingly measure their environmental footprint.
The idea is straightforward:
Don't just say safety matters.
Measure what safety means in practice.
The Index looks beyond an organisation's own premises to its value chain and sphere of influence—the areas where its activities, products, services, contracts and relationships can affect road safety.
WHAT DOES “ROAD-SAFETY FOOTPRINT” MEAN?
The term can initially sound abstract.
In the FIA framework, a road-safety footprint is essentially an organisation's measurable impact on road safety. It considers relevant road-crash fatalities and serious injuries within the organisation's value chain and sphere of influence.
That can include people who are:
employed → contracted → third parties → customers or clients
The purpose is not simply to produce another corporate number. It is to help an organisation identify where risks exist and where meaningful improvements can be made.
The Index therefore shifts the starting question from:
“Do we have a safety policy?”
towards:
“What is our safety impact—and what are we doing about it?”
HOW DOES THE FIVE-STAR INDEX WORK?
The FIA originally introduced a three-star framework based on two principal areas:
COMMITMENT
What has the organisation formally committed to doing?
FOOTPRINT
What does the organisation know about its actual road-safety impact?
The framework has now expanded to five stars, adding three further assessment areas:
PLANNING
Has the organisation established a clear and transparent action plan based on relevant safety-performance factors?
MONITORING OF SAFETY PERFORMANCE
Does it track safety performance and outcomes, and make the results accessible?
SAFETY CULTURE MANAGEMENT & SUPPLY CHAIN / PRODUCTS-SERVICES COVERAGE
Is road safety embedded across the organisation and its wider sphere of influence?
Together, the five areas are:
COMMITMENT → FOOTPRINT → PLANNING → MONITORING → SAFETY CULTURE
The progression is significant. It moves the framework from recognising responsibility and measuring impact towards planning, checking progress and embedding safety into organisational practice.
WHY FIVE STARS?
The five-star system is not simply a larger version of the previous rating.
The FIA methodology is designed to reward balanced performance across the five assessment areas. Its published methodology uses scores for each element and applies thresholds to prevent a strong result in one area from compensating indefinitely for a weak result elsewhere.
Under the methodology, the maximum overall score is 150 points. A five-star rating requires at least 120 points, with no individual element scoring below 15 points. There are also supply-chain coverage requirements for the highest ratings.
In other words, five stars are intended to represent breadth as well as strength.
TWO WAYS OF LOOKING AT SAFETY
There is another important distinction within the FIA Road Safety Index.
The system contains:
SUPPLY CHAIN RATING
This examines the organisation's broader corporate activities and value chain.
PRODUCT / SERVICE RATING
This applies to organisations whose products or services are relevant to road safety and evaluates the safety aspects of those products or services. This distinction matters because an organisation can influence road safety in more than one way.
Its own operations may create one set of risks.
Its products or services may create another.
The Index provides a framework for looking at both.
HONDA'S FIVE-STAR MILESTONE
The significance of the FIA's new five-star framework has already been demonstrated. In September 2026, Honda became the first organisation to achieve the new five-star rating, receiving the maximum rating in the products/services category. According to the FIA, the assessment recognised Honda's safety targets, governance, measurement of its global road-safety footprint, and plans to monitor and improve performance. The milestone provides the first practical example of what the expanded framework is intended to recognise.
WHAT THE INDEX IS REALLY TRYING TO CHANGE
At its core, the FIA Road Safety Index is about making road safety measurable, transparent and capable of continuous improvement.
It follows a management logic familiar from other areas of corporate performance:
UNDERSTAND → PLAN → MEASURE → MONITOR → IMPROVE
The objective is not simply to award stars. It is to encourage organisations to understand their influence on road safety and use evidence to improve it over time. And that is perhaps the most important part of understanding the Index.
The stars are the visible result. The management process behind them is the real story.
emBRWace EXPLAINS
1.What is the FIA Road Safety Index?
A data-driven framework that helps organisations assess, manage, report and improve their road-safety performance and footprint.
2.Why was it created?
To give organisations a structured way to turn road-safety commitments into measurable action and accountability.
3.What are the five assessment areas?
Commitment, Footprint, Planning, Monitoring of Safety Performance, and Safety Culture Management & Supply Chain / Products-Services Coverage.
4.Does it assess vehicles like a crash-test rating?
No. The Index assesses an organisation's management and impact on road safety. Its product/service rating is a separate part of the system for relevant organisations.
5.Why does the five-star expansion matter?
It broadens the assessment from commitment and footprint towards planning, monitoring and embedding safety across an organisation's wider sphere of influence.
THE TAKEAWAY
The FIA Road Safety Index is not simply a scorecard for how safe an organisation says it wants to be. It is an attempt to measure how systematically that ambition is being turned into action.
